


alone we traveled on

by judypoovey



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Minor character deaths mentioned throught
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judypoovey/pseuds/judypoovey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa flees King's Landing during the Battle of the Blackwater with the help of Sandor Clegane, but when he's captured by gold cloaks, she's forced into the wilderness on her own, until she finds a familiar face in the wilds of the Riverlands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i found something in the woods somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday gift fic to my dear friend Megan (sansaqueensansa on tumblr), that I ended up taking way too long to finish. I'm hoping to finish it today, so I'm posting what I have here to motivate me.

Sansa curled up under her cloak as Stranger plodded along. The rain was coming down with renewed force after a moment of hopefulness this morning, a moment that made her feel like the sun might shine. It wouldn’t, though. It would only rain and rain and rain. She didn’t even had a map, but she followed the road and knew Riverrun would be here somewhere, or maybe she would overshoot and end up at the Twins. Lord Frey was her grandfather’s – or uncle’s, had Hoster Tully passed? She had never met him – bannerman, and he would protect her. She hoped. Or she could turn north and hope for the Eyrie.

No, she would follow the road. Her mother and brother would be at Riverrun and she wanted nothing more than to sit with her mother while Lady Catelyn brushed her hair and told her that her suffering had ended.

It had been a fortnight since the battle of Blackwater, with Stannis’s forces pushed back into the sea. It had been a fortnight since she had escaped the Red Keep with Sandor Clegane, and four days since the Gold Cloaks had found him and she had been sent off on Stranger’s back alone. 

Sansa was not a little girl, she understood that Sandor was likely dead, but some part of her – the same part of her that did not want to believe that Arya or Bran or Rickon were dead, she thought – hoped maybe she’d see him again. All she had was his horse, now, and he would want it back.

She could have stayed and been safe, but all hope was gone from her in King’s Landing. Ser Dontos, her poor drunk Florian, had been caught and executed. Joffrey had not even deigned him worthy of decorating a spike, he’d killed him and dumped his corpse in the bay. It was ill-done, and he had been her last hope of escape. 

Until the Hound came to her and took her away.

But now she was alone, just her and Stranger, who seemed listless now that his master was likely dead. The first night, when she had dared to stop to sleep away the pain, he had not let her mount him again for almost a full day, bucking and whining and waiting for the Hound. When it became clear, even to a stubborn old horse like Stranger, that he was not returning, they set back out, following the road as fast as they could.

She'd feared that the gold cloaks had tried to follow her, but not far behind her she heard a pack of wolves and the shouts of men. She turned back to see a massive shape moving through the trees, and she wanted to cry. It was not Lady’s shade protecting her, though. She was wise enough to know that. It was Lady’s sister.

Any traveler that passed her saw a dirty girl in her father’s cloak, riding her father’s horse. The hood hid her hair and she was too dirty and travelstained to be highborn to the naked eye. She had naught but what food they had scavenged before the gold cloaks had descended on them and a small hunting knife. If they caught her, she would be taken back to the city.

Alive or dead, it mattered very little to Sansa Stark at this point. She would never return to King's Landing.

After two days of hard riding, she took to riding mostly at night, slowly, but stayed on the road to avoid Stranger falling. During the day she pulled back into the trees, tied him down and brushed him or braided his mane, and rarely did she sleep, jumping at every noise. But at night when she rode, the wolves howled to her and she felt safe. It had to be Nymeria. And she thanked the wolf in her prayers, though there were no weirwoods on the kingsroad.

She had a bite of food and sip of water every day, but little more. Her tummy ached and begged and she wished she could stop at an inn, but she feared the gold cloaks too much, even with the wolves behind her. Without the Hound, she was too vulnerable. He had made the mistake of stopping too often, as if they weren’t fugitives.

When she found the Trident she would think about stopping. She only wished she had a map.

She felt like the Trident was close, but the longer she went without food or sleep, the less sure of anything she became. The rain finally stopped and she paused to change into a dry dress, though she had only packed two and the one she had worn through the rainstorm was undoubtedly ruined. She hung it from a low branch of a tree and hid behind it as she changed, clumsy in her fatigue. She ate an apple, though it was soft and bruised after days in Stranger’s saddlebag, it was exactly what she needed.

The road was empty, today. The only people she saw were graves.

She sat down, just for a moment, just because her legs were raw and tired and her hands ached with burst callouses. Sansa didn’t know when she fell asleep, but she awoke at nightfall.

“Girl,” someone called to her, not unkindly.

She blinked in the dim evening light and saw someone walking towards Stranger.

“Leave him be!” she said suddenly, her voice far too loud. “Do not touch my horse,” she added, the dizzy, tired boldness leaving her immediately as she stood, her hood falling down.

“Sansa?” someone said. “Sansa Stark?”

Her eyes adjusted and she saw a group of men. A bearded man pushed forward and once the light hit him, she almost wanted to cry from relief. “Harwin, is that really you?” she asked. She remembered the young man pulling Arya’s pony around the yard and laughing with her brothers. His father had taught her to ride.

“Lady Sansa! How did you come by such an ill-manner horse?” he asked, a note of humor in his voice.

“His true owner…disappeared,” she lied. “I found him, and he’s mine.” She had always been jealously protective of her belongings, a result of having so many siblings and she was not about to allow anyone to take Stranger from her.

“Come with us m’lady, we’ll get you hot food and a clean bed.”

“You never returned to King’s Landing,” she noted, a little sad, as she weakly attempted to mount her horse. Suddenly the days of fatigue crashed down upon her and she could barely lift herself. Harwin gave her a leg up, and she thanked him.

“We never finished our task,” he told her simply. That was true. Gregor Clegane still loomed in the west, the last she had heard. “We are still your father’s men, and Robert’s,” he added, which sounded odd to her.

“King Robert is dead. And my father.”

“And yet we serve them all the same. A forgotten fellowship. The brotherhood without banners.” Harwin smiled, that smile adults use when a conversation is over. Sansa understood, and followed Harwin and his group down the road. She had heard of the Brotherhood while she was in the city, a band of outlaws led by young Lord Dondarrion. Yet, he was dead many times over and so was the king who had sent them out. An odd sort of thing, but almost romantic. A band of heroes. Seeing them now, they were just dirty men, no different than any other soldier.

It was another day of travel before they got to their destination: The Inn of the Kneeling Man, in a state of total disrepair. She led Stranger to the stable and found three horses already tied up. She put him in the farthest stall and fed him from a bucket of oats lying out, taking time to brush him and talk to him.

“I’ll be right back, I promise,” she said when she could no longer ignore the woozy feeling engulfing her.

She opened the door to the inn and found a commotion. Someone shouted Harwin’s name and she knew that voice. She knew that voice.

A towering man in yellow held a small, squirming child underneath one arm, his nose trickling blood. He dropped the girl as she pleaded for Harwin to recognize her, but it didn’t matter because Sansa Stark  _knew that voice._

“Arya?” she asked, her mouth dry. She had started to cry. “Arya!” Her little sister, her hair all cut off and ragged, dressed as a boy, gaped at her. A flayed man was stitched to the breast of her jerkin.

“Sansa!”

They were both crying, now, and clinging to each other as though they would both disappear if they let go. “I thought you were dead!” Sansa almost shouted, marveling at her mousy little sister who she hadn't seen in so long. “I can’t believe it…”


	2. deep into the mountain sound

They stayed two nights at the Kneeling Man, Sansa, Arya and Arya’s two friends: an orphan boy named Hot Pie and a broad-shouldered, muscular boy of an age with Robb called Gendry, shared a small room while they cleaned up and rested. She thought perhaps they were staying for Sansa’s benefit, because she found herself more exhausted than she had thought possible.

Hot Pie was funny but seemed nervous around her and Gendry was sullen and quiet. Hot Pie baked them the most delicious bread she’d ever eaten, and when they decided to leave, he decided to stay. The foul-tempered inn-keeper chastised the men of the brotherhood about their bastards as they left, and the men laughed, especially the singer, Tom.

Arya was tearful to say goodbye to Hot Pie, and she punched him on the arm for calling her ‘m’lady’.

“Will we go to Riverrun?” she asked Harwin politely as they mounted.

“Soon enough, m’lady.”

“When?” Arya demanded hotly. The freckly young man to her right, that Sansa knew from somewhere but couldn’t place, spoke up.

“After you’ve seen Lord Beric, of course. Then we’ll take you home to be ransomed to your kingly brother and be on our way,” he said.

Sansa balked at the notion of being ransomed, though she supposed she should have expected it. The Hound had mentioned ransoming her once, in a rare moment of sobriety. Arya looked surly.

“Can’t you take us now?” she demanded.

“No. A bunch of lowborn soldiers dragging you to the walls of Riverrun would look quite ill-done indeed,” Tom the singer said. “And the Tullys have no love for old Tom o’Sevens.”

“Because you stole off with a girl Lord Edmure took fancy to,” the yellow-cloaked one reminded him, rolling his eyes. “And then wrote a song about it.”

“I did not. It was a song about a floppy fish.”

Sansa wrinkled her nose.

“I like your horse, Sansa,” Arya told her. She had stuck close to her sister since their reunion, as if the brotherhood might separate them again if they were out of each other’s sight, but Arya had not spoken much. She hadn’t talked about leaving King’s Landing and neither had Sansa.

“Thank you. He’s not really mine,” she said, though she guessed he kind of was.

Their first stop was Acorn Hall. Lady Smallwood greeted them with a loud laugh, until she saw Sansa and Arya, and then she wheeled around to Tom and leveled him with a terrible glare. “What are you doing dragging these poor children around everywhere?”

“Only so far as the Inn of the Kneeling Man, m’lady.” He awkwardly plucked a string and looked at his feet, abashed. Sansa almost wanted to laugh.

“Come on girls, let’s get you bathed and into some clean clothes.”

Lady Smallwood was the sort of host that Sansa was happy to have. She was well-spoken and kind, but the real sort of kind, not the false kindness Sansa had grown so used to. The queen had seemed kind, once, but in the face of someone truly wanted to help, Cersei’s falseness was more obvious.

Her handmaidens scrubbed Sansa’s back and helped her brush the dirt and tangles from her hair. It had been so long since she’d had a bath. Lady Smallwood was shorter than Sansa, but her dresses fit well enough. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the most luxurious gown, just being in something clean made her feel more like herself.

Arya came in a few moments later, dressed in a little girl’s brown dress, and it made Sansa giggle. It made Arya look more and less like the sister she remembered at Winterfell; but all the same it was better than the Bolton clothes she had worn before.

“I do hope that fits,” she said as she adjusted Arya’s sleeves. “I sent my daughter to Oldtown when the war began, I’ve an aunt who’s a septa. She won’t be needing these. She was a lovely singer, my girl,” she added, sounding a little sad, as she indicated to a pile of dresses just Arya’s size. “And you’re so tall already,” she told Sansa warmly. “We should just be happy I’m not a plumper woman or this would slide right off you.”

“Thank you for your kindness, Lady Smallwood,” Sansa said, nudging Arya into thanking her as well.

“You look like proper ladies now. I do hope you’re no one too important,” she told them, still looking quite sad. “In times like these, it’s best not to matter too much to anyone. I would keep you here myself, but I’ve got hardly any defenses. Best to see you to Lord Beric.”

They came down as dinner was being served and it took all of Sansa’s ladylike restraint to not gorge herself. Gendry laughed himself silly at the sight of them, she supposed just because of Arya. Gendry, who had cleaned up a little too, was a handsome boy with black hair and blue eyes, and he looked quite familiar to her. Something about his smile reminded her of the gallant Lord Renly.

The Tyroshi, Greenbeard, asked Lady Smallwood about Lord Beric over the table. “Have you heard word of him?”

“Word and deed!” she said with a little laugh. Arya leaned in to listen closer and Sansa found herself unwittingly eavesdropping as well. She remembered Lord Beric – Jeyne had loved him fiercely and she had thought him old. He didn’t seem so old now in her memories, half a child even. She supposed that’s what happened as you aged, what seemed old once starts to seem young again – and she was interested to hear of his exploits.

“He was in here not a fortnight ago with Thoros and a dozen more,” she told them. “Herding sheep!”

All of the men laughed into their ale. “Thoros, herding sheep?”

Sansa remembered Thoros, too, the fat drunk priest who wielded a flaming sword during the melee. He was a fierce warrior during the siege of Pyke. She couldn’t imagine him herding anything, but she didn’t feel like she should laugh along with the others.

“An odd sight, aye, but he said as a priest he knew how to tend a flock.”

“And shear them,” Lemoncloak agreed, though with him it was hard to tell if he was jesting or not. He was a big man, fierce and surly most of the time. These were not outlaws of songs, but Sansa knew life wasn’t a song. Someone had told her that, once.

“That would make a fine song,” Tom said, plucking out a note. Sansa wished she could ask him to sing her a song, but an odd sort of shyness had come over her.

“Yes, by someone who doesn’t try to rhyme Dondarrion with ‘carry on’,” Lady Smallwood said in a sharp voice. “Or play Lay My Sweet Lass Down in the Grass to every pretty milkmaid and leave them with big bellies.”

“That was Let Me Drink Your Beauty,” Tom replied, unabashed at the wry tongue-lashing he had gotten. “And milkmaids are happy to hear it. As was a highborn lady, once, as I do recall. I play to please.”

Lady Smallwood’s nostrils flared, and Sansa was surprised she didn’t throttle him right there. This seemed like the sort of quarrel her parents would have from time to time. “There are girls you’ve pleased all across the riverlands, drinking tansy tea.” As she spoke, she seemed to remember that Sansa and Arya were there, and stopped herself from finishing her thoughts. “They’ll be calling you Tom O’Sevensons before too long.”

“I passed seven sons many years ago,” he said with another tuneless pluck. “Lovely boys. They have my voice.”

Sharna had said something about them having some of Tom’s other qualities, too, but neither Sansa nor Arya knew what to make of that.

“Did Lord Beric share any plans with you, m’lady?” Harwin asked, sensibly interjecting himself into the dispute.

“He never does, but Stoney Sept is hungry, so perhaps there. And I’ve had less pleasant callers, as of late,” she added with a poignant sip of wine. “Wolves howling about Jaime Lannister.”

“So the Kingslayer’s escaped?” Tom asked, his finger slipping from his strings.

“Well I expect so.”

Sansa strained to hear them. ‘Wolves?’ she mouthed to Arya, who furrowed her eyebrows and leaned forward over the table to listen, her elbow almost bumping over a cup of water.

“What did you tell them?” One-eyed Jack Be Lucky asked her.

“Told them that Ser Jaime was in my bed, far too tired to come to the window. They didn’t like that, so my crossbowmen sent them off with a few quarrels.”

“Who was it, who came looking? Northmen?” Arya finally asked, bold as always, but Sansa was interested too. Was Robb close? He would save them, she knew he would.

“They left no names, but wore black. A white sun on their standard.”

‘Karstarks,’ Arya and Sansa both silently mouthed. Her brother’s own men so close by. Harwin knew what it meant too.

“How did Ser Jaime escape, then?” Lem Lemoncloak demanded.

“They said, not that I believe them, that Lady Catelyn freed him.”

Tom snapped a string in surprise and Arya looked ready to lunge over the table.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Sansa said in a voice far too hot for a lady. That was her mother they were talking about.

“I agree with you, little lady, but perhaps you two’d best be outside.” Harwin muttered some excuse about being Riverlands girls to Lady Smallwood. Fond of the Tullys, supposedly. Lady Smallwood was shrewd enough not to ask.

Sansa obeyed gracefully and Arya followed her begrudgingly. Gendry came out with them.

“Do you think Mother would really do that?” Arya asked, kicking a pinecone. “Free the Kingslayer?”

“No. Those Karstarks were lying, or they were wrong. She would never do that,” she said, but Sansa knew that people were capable of anything. Even Mother.

“I’m going to go look at the smithy,” Gendry said. “Do you want to come?” he asked the two of them, a little bit abashed.

“Sure,” Arya said.

“I’m going to go check on my horse,” Sansa said, graciously allowing Arya to be alone with her friend. She woke in fear every morning that Stranger would abandon her, ill-tempered as he was, but he was always wear she hobbled him.

She found a brush somewhere in the stable and went to work on his black coat. She wished she had Lady, she thought that the direwolf would have liked Stranger quite a bit.

When she left the stable, Arya was dusting off a torn dress, laughing with Gendry.

“Look at what you’ve done to Lady Smallwood’s dress,” she said to Arya. “What on Earth were you doing?”

“Me and Gendry were fighting,” she confessed, a little shamefaced. Sansa fought the urge to send a disapproving look to the smith, instead promising to help Arya clean up. They went inside and Tom was singing a song, a nice song that Sansa didn’t know, and Harwin and Anguy were laughing at Gendry and Arya.

Lem scolded the smith and Sansa was grateful for that. A boy ought to know better than to fight with a girl half his size, and a highborn at that.

"I started it!" Arya protested, which didn't surprise her one bit.

“Come on girls, let’s get this one cleaned up,” Lady Smallwood said, ignoring Tom’s song and sending them up. Arya was forced into another bath, and this time, mercifully, the serving girls trimmed her ratty hair as they scrubbed her, leaving her looking at least a little less disheveled. 

Sansa wondered if Arya would tell her the whole story of how she escaped King’s Landing, and wondered if Arya would ever ask about her own escape. Now wasn’t the time.

“I’m sorry about your dress, it was pretty,” Arya told Lady Smallwood as she put on boy’s riding clothes the next day. “I didn’t mean to tear it.”

“Stay strong, little ladies, be brave,” was all she told them, a motherly hand on each of their shoulders.


	3. i cured my skin, now nothing gets in

Sansa wondered if she and Arya could escape the brotherhood and go ahead to Riverrun on their own. She had a little bit of gold and the servants at Acorn Hall had packed them food. They could break away and take off. Though the dappled gelding Arya rode didn’t seem like it would keep up with Stranger, and she didn’t think her sister would leave Gendry behind.

If Arya got on Stranger with her, they would make better time. Arya was a better rider, it pained her to say, but she doubted that mattered to the poorly behaved horse underneath her.

“Where are we going now?” Arya complained loudly.

The answer was Stoney Sept, a little town.

“Your father won a famous battle here, once, did you know that?” Harwin told them as they entered the town. It seemed deserted. “The Battle of the Bells.” Neither of them had heard this story, Ned Stark had talked about the Rebellion to his sons, but not as much his daughters. “King Robert was injured and took refuge here, waiting for your father to rejoin him. Lord Connington the Hand wanted to find him before that happened and began tearing the town apart. Your father and grandfather Tully stormed the city before they found Robert, though, and a fierce battle ensued. Then the bells began to ring and the king rejoined the fray.”

Sansa could imagine the fighting – in the alleys and streets and even atop the stoney buildings – and she could imagine how splendid King Robert had been back then, really in her mind he looked a bit like Gendry.

But that was absurd.

“Is everyone dead?” Arya asked, observing the abandoned town.

“Just a little shy,” Anguy told her. He had been a champion at the tourney in her father’s honor, and it had taken Sansa a shameful amount of time to realize that. A few people peered out of their windows at them, a baker yelling down a greeting to Lem.

Their stop was not an inn, she realized as soon as she stepped in the door.

“It’s a brothel,” Arya declared, as if proud of her deduction.

“Do you even know what a brothel is?” Gendry shot back with a condescending little twitch of his eyebrow. Sansa wondered if she should tell him to watch his tone.

“Like an inn, with girls,” Arya replied, suddenly less sure of herself, even though that was as close to the right answer as a girl of eleven needed to be. Sansa, being almost a woman grown, knew what they were. Lord Littlefinger owned several, but clearly not this one.

The owner was a redhaired woman who called herself Tansy.

“Absolutely not. You’re going to bathe before you step foot in here,” she told them, shoving the men of the brotherhood out the door with her mere presence. “You left fleas behind last time. Yours were green,” she added to Greenbeard, who denied having fleas, not so secretively scratching behind his ear.

They went out back to wash and Arya and Sansa were allowed inside.

Two of Tansy’s girls were arguing over whether Arya was a girl or a boy, much to Arya’s obvious indignation.

“She’s a girl,” Sansa told them, ready for a bath.

“I had a bath two days ago!” Arya complained. They were scrubbed down in spite of their complaints, and the girls gushed over Sansa’s hair as they helped her brush it. When they went downstairs, the men had come back in and dispersed among the merry looking women. Gendry was sitting awkwardly in the corner.

They sat with him, a little away from the men as they flirted and groped the women of the Peach, who seemed delighted to have them around. A man sauntered up a moment later.

“Aren’t you the prettiest thing in the room?” he asked Sansa, wine on his breath. “How much do you cost?”

She opened her mouth to reprimand him, but Gendry spoke first. “That’s my sister, you sot, get on out of here.”

On cue, Lem loomed over the man. “Leave the little ladies alone,” he grumbled in his sour voice. For all his ill-demeanor, Sansa quite liked Lem. He was rough, but honest, in a way that she had not seen at all in King’s Landing.

The man sulked off and they were left to it.

“Thank you, Gendry,” she said graciously, before Arya could comment that they weren’t siblings. She thought maybe Arya was a little taken with the strong, bullheaded boy. She couldn’t blame her, but Sansa’s heart was frozen. Handsome boys were trouble.

“My pleasure, m’lady,” he replied, and she didn’t miss the twist of bitterness in his voice. He resented them a little, maybe.

“I wanted to thank you, also, for looking out for my sister.” The whirlwind of traveling had made it hard to have a quiet moment to speak with them. “I’m in your debt.”

Arya and Gendry both flushed.

“Arya did just as much of the looking out as me, m’lady,” he admitted, mumbling. “She’s the one who got us out of Harrenhal.”

“Harrenhal?” she repeated, feeling a little silly.

“The Mountain’s men captured us. Then Lord Bolton took over. Then Lord Tywin,” she explained, sheepish. Arya was not a great storyteller, but Sansa leaned in to hear more of her explanation. “He meant to leave the castle to the Bloody Mummers, so we escaped. Me and Gendry and Hot Pie.” Her mouth twisted in a frown, and she looked so like Father… “Yoren meant to take us to Winterfell, the man of the night’s watch. But then the gold cloaks killed him for not giving him Gendry.”

“Why did the gold cloaks want Gendry?” Sansa asked, tilting her head, thinking maybe she had an inkling. She remember, suddenly, that the gold cloaks had allegedly murdered a babe at the breast and the babe’s mother – a whore – on the order of Queen Cersei. A black haired babe.

They both shrugged. “Guess they thought I was someone important. Maybe the son of one of them cloaks.”

“I’m the daughter of a king, myself,” a black haired girl declared arrogantly, plopping down beside Sansa. “Well that’s what I think at least. Robert hid here during his rebellion. He had all of the girls, but he liked my mother the best, they say.” Sansa wanted to be appalled – Robert had gone to war for love! – but the shrewd way the girl smiled kept her quiet. “Named me Bella, for the battle.”

None of them introduced themselves, Bella didn’t care. “All that to say, you think a king’s daughter is worth a little time?” she asked Gendry, flirtatious. “I’m free to a friend of the lightning lord.” Sansa wondered how that had come to be. “You can ring my bells.”

“You can’t!” Sansa blurted out. “She’s your sister!”

Then she turned beet red and stared down at the cup of water she’d been sipping, mortified at the half-cocked daydream that had just tumbled out of her stupid mouth.

“Well, there is a resemblance,” Arya noted, her face rapidly turning pink as she fought back an absurdly high pitched laugh. It came out eventually.

Sansa was grateful to say goodbye to the Peach the next morning, after Lem and Anguy had cleaned out crow cages that the Mad Huntsman had left out. She wasn’t keen on meeting anyone called the Mad Huntsman, and he’d had heated words with both of the men before they’d left.

It was a long ride before they got to what seemed to be their final destination. Sansa, Arya and Gendry were blindfolded for what seemed like ages. Lem Lemoncloak held her hand to keep her from stumbling once she dismounted Stranger, walking down a slope of craggy rocks, slick with moisture.

When she removed the cover over her eyes, the darkness was a shock. Arya was next to her and she reached for her sister’s hand, her heart pattering wildly. They were certainly underground. Other people were here too, moving among the roots of great weirwoods.

Sitting in a throne of these roots was the lord they were to be presented to; hacked apart and scarred. This couldn’t be – but then it could  _only_  be – the lightning lord, who had once been so handsome. But sure as the sun would rise, Beric Dondarrion stood from where he had sat and walked over to get a better look at them.


	4. heard them calling in the distance

Sansa didn’t know what about this cave and the people in it unsettled her so, but they did. They were no different than the men she had been riding with for nearly a week, and they seemed just as amicable to her. But Lord Beric stood before her, tall and copper-haired, but infinitely older than he had been when he’d left King’s Landing on her father’s orders.

He was missing an eye and part of his head seemed caved in. He seemed, with no other words left in her to describe it, he seemed rather dead. Grievously wounded was more likely. She remembered that she could see some glimmer of bone under the Hound’s burns and at one time she’d thought no one could live through that. But now she knew people could live through everything, if they were strong enough.

“Ladies Sansa and Arya of House Stark,” Harwin told him, and he nodded slowly, blinking his one eye in the dim of the cave. Fires burned everywhere. Sansa didn’t know how she had thought it dark before. Sansa inclined her head slightly, not sure if she should curtsy. Arya rolled her eyes.

“Welcome. It’s humble, but you won’t be here too long, if the omens favor it,” he said.

“You intend to go with them?” someone asked, and he took up so much of the cave and appeared so suddenly that Sansa had to take a step back, her heart hammering. Had he been there before or had he walked up while she was too fixated on the ruin of Lord Beric?

“Of course, Thoros.”

Sansa remembered Thoros of Myr, fat, with his bald head and his red robes, but standing before them was a somewhat thin bearded, shaggy-haired man. It was obviously the same man, even in the dark. He fought with a flaming sword, her father had told her. A great friend to Robert Baratheon. Pease in a drunken pod. A hero of the siege of Pyke.

“Then we’ll leave as soon as we can,” Thoros said, sounding unsatisfied with the answer. “Unless something keeps us here. I’ll consult the flames.”

Sansa wanted to ask what that meant, but he left before she could. Instead, she turned to Lord Beric. “Do you have news of the war, my lord?” she asked as courteously as she could, being tired and out of sorts. She had never liked going underground. She remembered playing games in the crypts of Winterfell with her brothers… Gods, protect her, did Arya know the fate of Bran and Rickon? She had assumed so, and hadn’t wanted to speak of them… But she had been in the wilderness with scant a breath of news for close to a month and she was desperate to hear of Robb. Would he save them? Did they need saving?

“Stannis lost the battle of the Blackwater,” he said, though he didn’t really sound sure of the things he’d said. “The ironborn hold the north.” Arya inhaled, sharply. “Your brother waits at Riverrun and Tywin Lannister has returned to the capitol, with the Tyrell forces behind him.”

She wondered how they had sealed that alliance, and wondered briefly what poor soul would have the misfortune of being Joffrey’s queen. Someone from the Reach, so that the Tyrells and all their wealth did not abandon the Lannisters.

“Winterfell?” Arya asked, and it was Sansa who had to reply. They were sisters, it was her responsibility.

“Theon Greyjoy took Winterfell,” she said. “It was sacked…no one has found Bran or Rickon.” Denial hit her everywhere. She would not say dead.

Arya looked angry, but not especially angry at _her_ for having waited to tell her. She left to sit with Gendry, hiding her face in her hands.

“I apologize for my sister,” she managed to mumble. “And thank you for your graciousness.”

“There’s little to thank us for, my lady, and nothing to apologize for. By my life I will see you returned to your mother,” he told her in a grave voice, turning to walk among his men. She rejoined Arya and Gendry, wondering how much Lord Beric’s life was worth, as far as promises went.

It was close to a week before they left the cave, travelers keeping them hidden, and news of Lannisters and angry northmen in the riverlands steadying their resolve to leave. More reports of people hunting for Jaime Lannister came in every day, and Sansa couldn’t shake the feeling that her mother truly had set him free. After a long, uncomfortable week of Arya’s aggrieved silence and sleeping on a damp cave floor, the prospect of riding again couldn’t come soon enough.

“I know this horse,” Thoros of Myr said to her as she got ready to leave. “How did you come by Sandor Clegane’s stallion?”

Arya was watching her curiously now, and Sansa’s cheeks burnt with her secret. It wasn’t worth keeping it a secret, she wasn’t sure why she had. Like Bran and Rickon, she just hadn’t wanted to talk about it. If she kept it hidden away, it wouldn’t be real. “He helped me escape the city, during the battle,” she finally said. She knew Arya still hated the Hound because of her butcher’s boy, but maybe now that he was gone, she would put that to rest. “But the gold cloaks caught up to us. I took Stranger and ran and he was…” Captured? Killed? “Well, he never came back,” she said, her tone turning frosty. “The wolves stopped the gold cloaks and that’s when I found Harwin.”

“The wolves?” Arya asked.

“A whole pack of them,” Sansa told her. “I thought…it sounds silly, but I thought it might have been Nymeria.”

Arya’s face was grim as she nodded. “Nymeria would protect you. I bet it was her.” She said it with such surety that Sansa’s own lingering doubts faded away. A giant she-wolf protecting her had seemed a little ludicrous, until Arya was sure it was true. Nymeria was their guardian in the woods.

“I hope the wolves will protect us on the way to Riverrun, then,” Thoros said with a hint of levity in his voice. “We’ll need it, I don’t doubt they’re still looking for you.”

Sansa swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded. “I’m sorry to cause this trouble for you.”

“Ah, it’s not as if they aren’t looking for us too,” he said with a smile and a wink, leaving to saddle his own horse.

A boy that she had seen in the cave but not really spoken to trotted up between she and Arya. He was a fair-haired boy about her age, and she’d heard him called ‘Ned’, though it made her heart stop every time she did. He was Lord Beric’s squire. Maybe she had seen him at the tourney but not remembered him.

“My Lady Sansa, I’m pleased to finally make your acquaintance,” he said. “And My Lady Arya, too,” he added. Arya nodded curtly and Sansa wished she could scold her for her manners. “I…well, I wanted to ask you something, but I do not wish to offend.”

“I’ve been sleeping on cave floors and eating dried mutton for a week, you’ll find me difficult to offend,” Sansa said, hoping that she sounded more witty than petulant. The boy didn’t laugh, but Arya and Gendry did. At least she amused someone.

“Well, uhm. Jon Snow is your brother, yes?” he asked.

She missed Jon so much she could not even correct that he was their half-brother. Even his face would be a welcome sight among the endless trees. “He is, yes.”

“We’re milk brothers, he and I. I did not expect to meet his family here,” he said, conversational. Of course, Sansa knew what he meant by that, but Arya made a noise of confusion. “His mother, Wylla, was my wet nurse, my Lady,” he continued to Arya.

“His mother?” Sansa repeated. She had never pictured Jon’s mother, though a tragic, romantic part of her had remembered the whispered rumors of Ashara Dayne and thought maybe…then Jon would be highborn, not some lord’s by-blows on a whore or wench, like Gendry was.

“Did he never speak of her? Or…Ashara Dayne?” the boy asked, slightly uncomfortable as he rode beside them.

“Who are you?” Arya finally asked, quite rudely, and Sansa realized that the boy hadn’t actually introduced himself at all.

He seemed taken aback. “Edric Dayne, my lady. The Lord of Starfall?”

Gendry made an irritated noise and Sansa shot him a glare. Being a king’s bastard (which he didn’t believe, but Sansa did, because she had eyes that worked) had not given him any manners, or any extra love for highborns. Sometimes, she thought he only spoke to her because she was Arya’s sister, which put her off a little.

“Ashara Dayne was my aunt. My Aunt Allyria told me that Lord Stark and Lady Ashara loved each other, a long time ago.”

“Well, she’s wrong. Our father loved our lady mother,” Arya said snippily.

“I’m sure he did, this was years ago.”

Arya put her heels into her horse and shot up to ride with Anguy and Harwin, shooting a withering look back at Edric.

“I did not mean to offend her,” he said, though Sansa was a little offended herself. But Jon Snow had a mother and her father had a lost love. Now their brother was lost to them and her mother was the one with a lost love.

“How did the Lord of Starfall come to be an outlaw?” she asked him, teasing.

“I’m Lord Beric’s squire. I came for the Tourney. He was espoused to my aunt…before…” He took a deep breath when he paused. “I’ve fought in every battle he has, even though I’m only 12.”

Sansa thought him quite young even though she was not yet 13.

That night, they sheltered at a place called High Heart, in a grove of weirwood stumps. It made Sansa think of the faces in the trees, the dripping red sap. It made her think of home, and when she had hobbled Stranger, she sat to pray. Arya came with her, but lounged in the stumps rather than actually praying.

“Jon has a mother,” Arya said in a wonderous tone. “Wylla.”

Sansa agreed. “I wonder what she’s like.”

“I wonder if we’ll ever get to tell Jon,” Arya added, somewhat sadly.

“We will. Robb will take us back and we’ll go North and send a Raven to the wall. But we can’t tell Mother about it, it would upset her gravely.”

“Winterfell is burned, though.”

“Winterfell is stone. It can be fixed.”

The attack came in the morning. An outrider came back to where they rested; a group of Lannister soldiers not far off, coming their way.

“We ought to hide, wait for them to pass,” Sansa blurted out before she could contemplate how craven she sounded.

“We can’t get to Riverrun if you all get murdered by Lannisters,” Arya added in a reproachful voice.

Their complaints were ignored, but Lord Beric left Edric Dayne and Gendry behind. High Heart was, in fact, quite high, and Sansa and Arya could see for miles. She wondered if they would see a battle, though Sansa had seen her fill of them, Arya seemed keen to watch.

The burst of fire caught their eye; Lord Beric’s sword, once unremarkable, crackled with fire. A trick, like Thoros’s wildfire swords, she thought, but she remembered the green glow of it on the Blackwater, and thought maybe this was…

“Magic,” Arya muttered.

The noise of the battle was unmistakable in the quiet of the dawn. She could see the air shimmer down below them, the flame of the sword roaring and echoing in an odd way. It must have been magic.

She was shocked when the fighting got closer to where they waited. She knew there were archers above them, for their own safety. Edric complained about not being allowed to fight, and so did Arya.

“You cannot go into battle,” she told her sister. “You’re an unarmed girl!”

Arya rolled her eyes and slumped back, watching the fighting through the side of her eyes, but something seemed to catch her eye as the light filtered through the trees. She mouthed something to herself and sprang up, pushing through Gendry and running off, sliding in the mud but keeping her footing.

Sansa stood up, unsure of what to do. She didn’t want to shout for her and draw attention to her. If the Lannisters caught either of them…

She was frozen there, watching her sister’s retreating back.

“I need your horse,” Gendry said forcefully, pulling Sansa to her feet. She walked over to Stranger and untied him, and without a thought, mounting him.

“Get on behind me,” she told him, and he did. She was a better rider than Gendry, though neither of them were as good as Arya, but Arya was on foot and she thought Stranger would be big enough to bear all three of them.

She hoped.

Arya wasn’t far when they caught up to her, a number of Beric’s men calling after them. The group of Lannisters had been small to begin with, and it was clear to her that they were losing the fight. Arya stole a sword off of a corpse, which Sansa thought was ill-done. She put up her hood and hunched down onto Stranger as she walked among the fights, though the men remaining didn’t think anything of her. The air was hot with fire.

“Come back right now!” Sansa called to her.

Arya swung the sword at a man, catching him in the knee. She didn’t have the strength for it, and Sansa couldn’t understand why she was doing this at all. The man she hit was on the ground and she was standing over him.

“Something wrong with your leg, boy?” she asked him, taking something off of his belt. Sansa dismounted and walked to her sister, reaching out for him as she held the needle thin sword in one hand.

“Arya…”

“He killed Lommy,” she said fiercely. “He was my friend and he killed him because his leg was hurt.” There were tears in her eyes and her knuckles were white around the hilt of the sword. “Then he stole the sword Jon gave me. Now I have it back.”

Gendry grabbed Arya around the waist before she could stab the man on the ground, throwing her over Stranger’s saddle. She kicked and fought and waved her sword when he did, but he didn’t seem to feel her rage at all. Sansa got back on the horse, Gendry remaining beside them.

An arrow took the man in the throat, and Anguy barreled up to them. “What in the seven bleeding hells are you doing? Go!” he yelled at them, but they all stopped to watch a long sword take Lord Beric in the shoulder, his flames sputtering out as he hit the dirt.

Stranger ran all the way back to High Heart before Sansa could even gasp.


	5. nothing but a shadow

If Lord Beric had been dead when they had left High Heart, he was certainly alive when he walked back up to where they had settled. Sansa was leaning back with Arya’s head in her lap. Arya was pretending not to cry, her recovered sword next to her. The ordeal of getting it back and seeing how bloodthirsty Arya had become was unnerving Sansa, but the most unnerving part is how she didn’t think it was wrong. The man had killed her friend, why shouldn’t he die? But now he was dead, and that was that.

Gendry seemed pale and got paler when the men walked up. It was noon, but it could have been midnight for all Sansa’s cared about the weather. Beric was walking slowly, his hand on Thoros’s shoulder.

Arya shot up, wiping her eyes.

“You were dead!” she exclaimed.

“Only wounded, terribly,” Lem told them. “Thoros is quite the healer.”

Beric and Thoros did not seem flattered by such, instead sitting with their backs to the nearest stump, while the rest of the men worked. “We will need to rest an extra night. My apologies,” was all Beric said to them for a moment.

“That was very foolish, what you did,” Thoros told Arya, who was staring at them curiously. “You could have been killed or captured. More Lannisters will be coming after us. It’s not far to Riverrun from here, but still far enough. If they had realized who you were…”

“Polliver killed my friend and stole my sword, I wanted it back,” she said stubbornly, sounding more like the little girl that their mother had so often scolded; defiant and petulant, staring at her scuffed boots. “And one of his men killed you,” she added, more confidently.

“Aye.”

“How --?” Sansa asked, her skin crawling with how plainly he responded. She looked around, and the rest of the brotherhood were watering horses, chopping firewood, and acting as though there was nothing unusual going on, but her stomach felt all twisted up. This wasn’t right.

It didn’t seem to bother Arya.

“Thoros,” he said simply, and the priest looked at him with tired eyes. “How many times have you brought me back?”

“It’s the Lord of Light that does it,” he replied. Sansa had never heard of such a thing, or if she had, she’d long forgotten it. Some Essosi god, that much she knew, her father had told her. But they held the Old Gods and this was sorcery.

“How many times?” he asked, more insistent.

“Five? No. Six.”

“Six times,” he said, sounding weary.

Sansa felt sick. This was something foul. She didn’t know how Arya could just sit there as though it meant nothing. The Others raised the dead, too, she wanted to shout. Instead, she walked down to Stranger and brushed him, finding a carrot for him to snack on while she regained her bearings. Magic was not a thing of the songs anymore, and it was nothing like the songs. A gust blew at her, snapping her dress against her legs, and Arya’s voice drifted down the hell.

“Could you bring back a man without a head?”

It’s not as if the thought had never occurred to her.

Sansa bit back a sob as she decided to walk back up the hill, bumping into Edric on the way.

“My Lady…are you all right?” he asked, tilting his head curiously. She knew her cheeks were flushed, even though her anxiety had begun to fade. “Are you upset about how your sister behaved today?” he asked.

“No, it’s not…” she stopped. It would likely be rude to discuss Edric’s Lord with him. He was probably used to this kind of thing, but she wasn’t. “It’s nothing, just a bit of womanly emotion. Thank you, though, Edric.” She couldn’t call him Ned and he never asked her to.

She rejoined her sister, who was sulking. Something had happened.

“I thought you were going to smith for Robb when we got to Riverrun!” she snapped at Gendry.

“You came up with that! I never agreed to it,” he said sulkily. “I don’t feel like serving your kingly brother. I’m tired of that.”

“You’re free to stay on as a part of our brotherhood, lad,” Thoros told him, and Arya made an angry noise in her throat.

“Arya, let him be,” Sansa said.

Arya stomped over to sit between Sansa and Edric, as far away from Gendry as she possibly could. As the sun began to set, they sat eating what little they had to sustain them until Riverrun, and Sansa heard the trees rustling.

Someone was whispering. Was it the Old Gods?

“There’s hardly any use in having a fire,” Thoros said, sounding irritated as he sat back away from the fire he’d made. He had been staring at it for a long time. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

“That fire god of yours has no power here,” a voice said, and a little dwarf woman as white as the weirwood stumps hobbled into the light of the fire, clutching a stick. Her white hair almost dragged the ground, and she looked around. “You reek of death, lord of corpses.”

“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” Lord Beric said.

“Do you have anything for us tonight?” Thoros asked her, much more gently than Beric had spoken.

“It will cost you, the usual price.”

“You’ll have your song.”

“Dark dreams, lord Ember.” Sansa leaned in to hear the old woman over the crackling of the flames. Arya abandoned the pretenses of eavesdropping and stood up, walking over. Sansa followed, as quietly as she could. She wondered what the dwarf woman meant, if she meant anything at all.

“I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief. I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt a she-bear lurking among lizard lions, a dead cub behind her. And a red shadow waiting sleepless atop a cliff of ice, fighting for the dawn.” She paused. “And the king is dead.” She took wine, sipping greedily, and Sansa’s heart stopped. She groped for Arya’s hand, and took it with a soft squeeze.

“There are five kings,” Beric pointed out, narrowing his one good eye.

“The kraken king. Dead.”

Sansa let out a breath, too loudly.

“Come out, girl,” the old woman croaked.

Arya and Sansa stepped closer, and the dwarf woman recoiled.

“I see you. I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death.” She took a shuddering breath as she stared at Arya, who bumped into Sansa in her haste to step away from the woman. “You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!”

Arya looked at Lord Beric, confused.

“Don’t frighten the girl, she’ll be gone in the morning, as will we all,” Thoros said. “To Riverrun where her mother waits.”

“You won’t find them at Riverrun,” she said, laughing quietly, Arya sinking back into the shadows. Sansa’s heart still pounded, and she wondered what the old woman knew of her sister. “They’ll be at the Twins for the wedding.” Her laugh was so sinister that it sent shivers down Sansa’s back.

“Did the trees tell you that too?” Lem asked, sour as he came up, Tom behind him.

“No, but sometimes an old woman can still hear the gossiping of soldiers walking down the road,” she said with a cackle.

“So, I suppose we had best make for the Twins,” Tom said, tuning as he did. “The same song?”

“My Jenny’s, yes,” the old woman said, and the rest of the men went back to their work as Tom started his song. Sansa knew it, too. Her mother had sang it once. She couldn’t help but sing along, quietly, as if just to herself, but everything echoed in the hill, and she was sure everyone heard her.


	6. why did you run from everyone

The rain started two days after they set out for the Twins, slowing their progress to a crawl. Sansa thought they’d never make it at the pace they went, and Arya said as much often and loudly.

“The night is dark and full of terrors,” Thoros said wryly. “And wet, too, with nothing to do for it. We have to stop.”

Sansa, wrapped in a cloak someone had lent her (not Lem Lemoncloak, who had staunchly refused to let her borrow his), sighed. “How long do you think Robb will linger at the Twins after the wedding?” She would love to see a wedding, to see some joy and hope after so long being trapped in the endless corruption of the capitol.

“Not long, he’ll want to return to the field. But in what direction he means to march, no one seems sure,” Thoros said. They had asked people on the road if they’d heard rumor of the young wolf’s plan, but no one had. “We’ll get there in time. Mayhaps he’ll leave you at the Twins when he marches. I’m sure Lord Walder has a daughter or two your age to spend time with.”

Befriending a gaggle of Frey girls, homely and prickly proud as the Freys were supposed to be, sounded like a dream compared to the endless rain and cold as they rode.

Arya didn’t seem pleased with that idea. “I’d rather march with Robb,” she muttered, sulky, and Sansa agreed, but war was no place for them. Even their travels together had wearied Sansa of the road. She was ready to be somewhere safe and warm, with food and people to talk to. The men of the brotherhood were honorable in their own way, and had been better to her than any citizen of King’s Landing, but she didn’t know that she’d miss their company very much, except perhaps young Lord Edric, who was the picture of courtesy.

“You would rather win the war singlehandedly,” Anguy the Archer said, not unaffectionately. Arya blushed.

“Whatever they do, I’ll be glad to wash my hands of them,” Lem said under his breath. Harwin made a noise of protest and Sansa turned around to look at the big, yellow clad man. He looked away from her glare, clearly sheepish.

She would have felt guilty for inconveniencing them if they were there by choice, but it was an unspoken fact that they weren’t allowed to leave. Not that they would have survived just the two of them, anyway.

When it came time to cross the river, they were met with some difficulty. The rains had flooded the Trident. A little village sat at the edge of the river, half-drowned. As they rode through, a few people peeked from the upper windows.

“What can we do for you?” a suspicious looking man with a wood-axe on his hip asked.

“You ferry people across, no?” Thoros asked.

“Aye. But I couldn’t take this many people across on a day where the gods weren’t trying to drown us all,” he said, looking at their group.

“We can take two trips, the rest will be staying behind,” Lord Beric said, in his lord’s voice. Sansa had always noticed sometimes, lords and kings used two voices. Their regular voice, and their lord’s voice. Her father had told her something about it, lifetimes ago.

“It’ll cost ye. Especially if you mean to take that beast.” He gave a withering look to Stranger, and Sansa tightened her grip on the reins, thinking of all of the gold in the saddlebag. The Hound’s winnings from the tourney. She had kept them safe so far, and wasn’t about to part with them yet.

Thoros saved her the need to protect her money by producing some coins from his own horse. “And there will be more for you when we get across, or when the war is done, whichever happens first,” he said, a joke no one really laughed at.

“Some of you will need to stay, and we’ll rejoin you when we’ve ransomed the little Ladies,” Beric told the rest of the men who had made the journey with them.

They went across first, Arya, Sansa, Beric and Thoros. Then Anguy, Gendry, Lem, Edric and Tom came, and Harwin was last, bringing horses with him. He paid the man again, and those they had left behind promised to protect their little village as further repayment.

“We’ve had wolves howling up and down these banks for a moon, now,” the man on the boat said. “Searching for the Kingslayer, searching for the little Shewolf.”

“Shewolf?” Thoros asked, careful to not look at where Arya and Sansa were huddled.

“Aye, the Stark girl. She escaped King’s Landing, they keep saying, and no one has heard from her since. Say she disappeared on the back of a giant demon wolf. I told them wolves on two legs she probably got herself taken by that Stannis Baratheon, I did. He was sieging the city and the Lannisters killed her father, my thinkin’s that she’d run right to someone like ‘im.”

“So Stark’s men are looking for her?”

“And King Joffrey’s, too. They came up a fortnight ago. Ain’t seen no maid with red hair and a foul tempered stallion, I told them…” And Sansa felt cold when she realized he knew what he was saying, and he was looking right at her. Arya drew her Needle and stood next to her.

The old man eyed the sword and so did his men at the oars.

“Begging your pardons, it wouldn’t do to stab me, little lady.”

“You never saw her,” Thoros said, slipping another dragon into his hand. It was one they had stolen from the dead Lannister men they had encountered at High Heart. It felt dirty to her. Paying with a dead man’s coin. She didn’t say anything.

They reached the other bank a moment later, and it was near nightfall by the time they were all on the shore. “The rains will stop,” Thoros said, looking at the sky. “And we’ll make good time to the Twins.”

“Did your red god tell you that?” Arya asked, innocently curious.

“No, just a feeling in my old bones. Might be that’s the same, but I’d like to pretend I’ve got some instinct, you know.”

Little else was said on their march to the Twins.

“I can’t wait for the rain to stop,” Edric Dayne said mournfully. “It pounds on my helmet and gives me a headache.”

Sansa could see Gendry behind him pulling a mocking face.

“Just take off your helmet, then,” the bastard said, rolling his eyes.

“It makes my hair stick to my face,” he said, clearly not realizing he was being made fun of. Sansa wished Gendry wouldn’t do that, but he seemed to mistrust Edric now that he knew that he was a Lord. Sansa thought maybe it irritated him that Arya liked the other boy, though maybe that was a mind full of stories at work.

“Cut your hair then,” Gendry, whose hair was shaggy and unkempt and who almost had a beard, said critically.

“That seems a little extreme.”

“If you two don’t quit it, I’ll shave you both bald,” Lem said, walking between them. He had lost his horse as part of the price of crossing, and hadn’t wanted to double up with Tom. Their pace was slower for it, but they weren’t far at all, so Sansa’s sense of urgency was only a dull throb in her tummy.

They set out at dawn the next day, after crossing, and by midday she could see the castle in the distance. The rain had finally broken, angry gray clouds parting to reveal blue autumn skies once again.

“Might we stop so I could put on a fresh gown for the wedding?” Sansa asked, keeping her chin high. It was a silly request, girlish and petty, but she wouldn’t feel ashamed of it. She was going to see her mother again after so long, she wanted to feel the least bit presentable when she did.

Lord Beric acqueised to her request, sending out Harwin and Anguy to find them something to eat. Sansa found a secluded place to change, Arya keeping a lookout and helping her with the ties on the bodice. It was one of Lady Smallwood’s gowns, a little faded and nothing special about it, but she had folded it up and tucked it into the bag on Stranger’s saddle and it was only a little damp. She brushed her hair with her hands, untangling it and then braiding it, the way her mother wore it.

“Do you think Mother will hate me?” Arya asked. “Look at me…I’m all scuffed up, and…” She squeezed Needle’s hilt self-consciously.

“Of course not. She’ll be so happy to see you, she won’t even notice. She would never turn us away, and neither would Robb.” Once she was satisfied with her appearance, they made their way back to camp, and a freshly caught rabbit was serving as a meager lunch between all of them.

“I saved you a piece,” Edric said, handing her a bit of the rabbit. She took it delicately, with a smile.

“Thank you.”

Once they ate, they were on their way once again, and they were so close that Sansa felt like she might retch up the rabbit all over Stranger’s back. It was just down the hill, they were almost there. It was too much. It felt like that day, on the steps of Baelor, hope so strong she could float, but now she waited anxiously for something to puncture her joy.

“Are you nervous?” Arya asked her.

“Yes,” she confessed.

It was the closest either of them had been to their family since Father had been killed, and as the day wore on, the sun sinking further and further in the sky, the more her own excitement and terror built. She tried to recall her mother’s face, and Robb’s, so similar to her own.

The wind blew cold across them.

“I think we’ve missed the wedding,” Thoros said when the noises of revelry echoed up the hill. She could see tents and waving direwolf flags and hear the barks of Grey Wind. Why wouldn’t he be with Robb?

The men were drunk and merry, and didn’t notice them lingering in the distance.

“We’ll go on ahead and see about getting let in. Stay here with them,” Lord Beric said to Lem, his voice sharp. “Anguy, come with us,” he added, and three of them set off down towards the Twins. She could count the campfires Robb’s men were sitting around, drinking to the health of their king.

Sansa dismounted Stranger.

“Why can’t we go now?” Arya demanded of Lem.

“In case your kingly brother isn’t keen on negotiating,” Lem told her flatly. “Or so you don’t ride through a sea of drunken, rowdy northmen without a royal procession.” Sansa always forgot that in a world where her brother wasn’t a traitor, she was a princess. It made her heart flutter.

The drunken, happy shouts of revelry shifted so suddenly that all of the joy was sucked from Sansa’s blood in a cold instant. She felt a chill on her skin, holding onto the reins of her horse. A crossbow thrummed in the distance. She saw no enemy in the dark, and her confusion turned to terror. Edric’s horse reared in fear when a pained scream flew up to them on the wind.

The tents and waving direwolf banners caught fire. From their vantage point, it was impossible to tell who had attacked.

A wolf howled, but its grief was cut short.

“We have to leave!” Anguy shouted, riding back up the hill.

“What about my mother and brother?” Arya shrieked. Sansa’s grip on Stranger tightened, her stomach falling and her throat tightening.

“It’s too late.”

“I won’t go!” she snapped. Sansa almost wanted to agree with her. She almost wanted to stand her ground, go into the chaos for her family. She had done that for Arya, but without really thinking about it, she mounted Stranger.

Lem tossed Arya up onto the horse, behind Sansa, and sent him running back the way they had come. Her head pounded, and tears ran freely down her face. What hell had they just run from? What death had she brought upon her family again?

She remembered her father on the steps of Baelor, feeling the same pain, and knowing nothing had changed.


	7. we sleep until the sun goes down

There was such a tight stranglehold of grief upon Sansa’s very being that she could not speak or eat or breathe without tears threatening her. It seemed unfair to do things that her mother and brothers and father could not. Robb was gone – the scene at the Twins combined with what they’d heard on the road had confirmed it – and there were no Starks but she and Arya.

Arya, for her part, was fierce in her mourning. She demanded for three days that they turn back, that they find Lady Catelyn, convinced she was a hostage.

One morning all of that hope seemed drained from her.

“She’s dead, I dreamed it,” Arya said in a flat voice, staring at the river. She was behind Sansa, on Stranger, clinging to her. Sansa said nothing. She couldn’t say anything, she wouldn’t.

The wolves howled around them in the night, sharing in the Stark girls’ grief. It unsettled the men with them, but Sansa didn’t care, it brought her some measure of comfort. She was sure it was Nymeria, protecting them now that no one was left to do it.

On the fourth day since it happened, four days of riding along the river with no real direction in mind, they found Lady Catelyn on the shore of the Green Fork – or maybe the Trident, she had no idea how far they’d ridden. The men tried to obscure the ghastly image from Sansa and Arya, but the image was burned into her mind.

She dismounted Stranger.

With a shiver, she realized the Freys had done this. Her Lord Uncle’s own bannermen, and her brother’s, had stripped her mother naked and thrown her into the river.

“Bring her back,” she heard Harwin say, she supposed to Thoros, and she wheeled around with a rage that she hadn’t thought herself capable of.

“You will not,” she snapped. Arya gave her a reproachful look from where she stood beside her. “You will give me a cloak to cover her and we will bury her. My mother is dead and I mean to let her rest,” she said, tears finally coming, after she thought she may never cry again.

It occurred to her that her refusal of whatever magic Thoros had might have been an insult to Lord Beric, but she didn’t care. She covered her mother’s body with the cloak that was hastily offered to her and looked around.

“Tullys are laid to rest in the river, but we have no boat to send her off in,” she said. “So we will do it the Stark way, and bury her.” It felt wrong to lay Catelyn Tully to rest this way, but it was the only thing she had ever been sure of. It took Lem and Harwin far too long to dig the grave, far enough away from the shore that it did not risk being dug up.

Unable to look at her lady mother, with her opened throat and torn face, Sansa went about gathering smooth stones and acorns to mark the grave. Arya hid in the branches of a nearby tree, angrily sobbing. Sansa wanted desperately to be up there with her, but she had never climbed trees the way Bran and Rickon and Arya had. Now, she was the eldest, she was the heir, and she had her duty. Family. Duty. Honor.

She said goodbye to her mother by burying an acorn with her and hoping a tree would someday mark this place. She committed every branch and twig and the bend in the river to her memory, because until that oak grew, the only thing marking Catelyn Stark’s grave was Sansa’s memory of the place.

Arya came down at nightfall, exhausted by grief. Sansa put her arm around her and held onto her. This was all that was left. Jon was at the wall and all the rest were dead.

“Your Uncle, the Blackfish, holds Riverrun,” Lord Beric told her when he saw she was awake. He never seemed to sleep, himself. “Would he know you?”

“I’ve never met him,” she said, haltingly. “People always told me…that I looked like my mother,” she added, the sob building in her throat never coming out. She was a lady, even in the wilderness. “Maybe he would see that…” She didn’t really believe that.

“Riverrun would not be a wise course, my lord,” Thoros said from where he sat by the fire, ever watching the flames. “The Freys will have it.”

Beric nodded. “The Vale. You’ve an aunt there?”

“A Tully Aunt,” Sansa agreed. “I don’t think I’ve met her, either. And she never raised her banners for Robb…” That thought alone made her not want to go to the Vale. It was the only relative she had left that would ransom them, though. She knew that.

“Lady Lysa is the best option, and the might of the Vale would keep you safe,” he said.

“And if she won’t ransom us?” she asked.

“I…” Beric paused at that. “I could send you to Blackhaven,” he said, not sounding sure of himself. “Or perhaps to Acorn Hall. Lady Smallwood would take you.”

“Might I make a suggestion?” Thoros asked, though he didn’t actually wait for a reply before his suggestion came out. “We might be benefited by taking the little ladies north.”

“There is nothing in the north. Winterfell is burned,” he said, quiet.

“Jon Snow is at the wall,” Arya said. “He would take us.”

“But not for a price,” Lem groused.

“There’s someone at the wall who will ransom them,” Thoros said, mysteriously. “Plus, they are the Stark heirs. The Northmen would rally around them. Those who still have fight left in them. If they won’t, at least at the wall they’ll be safe for a time.”

“How do you presume we get north?” Lord Beric said, his tone sharp and cold. Thoros didn’t seem to register his irritation, but kept studying the flames as they slowly died. “Moat Cailin is held and the Neck is impossible to get through.”

“A ship?”

“With what gold?”

“I have gold,” Sansa said, breaking her revere finally. Her heart hammered wildly in her chest at the thought of returning home. Seeing Jon Snow again seemed too sweet to be real. They had never been close, she and her bastard brother, but he was the only brother left to her. “The Hound’s tourney winnings. It would be enough.”

“Then I suppose we’ll find a ship. Maidenpool.” Beric seemed unhappy with the way the conversation had progressed, but he made no complaints. “What is waiting for us in the north?”

Thoros looked at Sansa and Arya before answered, quieter than he ever was. “Someone who can help.”


	8. i don't stare at water anymore

It was a long march to Maidenpool, but after a fortnight of riding, stopping to avoid raiding parties. Freys rode by and Arya fumed when they ducked away.

“We don’t have the numbers to fight them,” Lord Beric told her. “We must deliver you safely.”

It had become a sleepless, dark march, a fortnight of woods and rivers.

A man met them before they got to Maidenpool. One of the brotherhood’s many men roaming the countryside. “Randyll Tarly holds Maidenpool for the crown,” he said. “It would be wise to avoid the place altogether, m’lord.”

“We require a ship.”

The man hesitated, and Beric and Thoros rode over to speak with him privately.

“Will we be able to get a ship?” Sansa asked, a little anxious. They were so close to freedom. Or something close to it. She wanted to see the weirwoods again. She wanted home. She knew Winterfell was lost to her, but the North…that was hers. Robb Stark’s heir belonged in the North.

There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.

“We will make camp for the night,” Beric said when he came back. His voice was flat, devoid of anything that might have told Sansa what they had just discussed. But she hobbled Stranger and sat with her sister, Gendry and Ned, as she had grown accustomed to. They were the best company she was likely to have for a long while.

Across them, not quite out of sight, she could see Lord Beric and Thoros speaking. Well, it seemed more like arguing. It was the silent sort of arguing that seemed reserved for adults. She could remember her parents having similar fights when they thought none of the children were watching.

They had been fighting a lot, lately.

“Have Lord Beric and Thoros always bickered so much?” she asked Ned, curious.

“Only since the…” he pursed his lips. “They got along very…well…for a long time. The arguing started after Lord Beric…”

Died, then. Sansa didn’t press him to finish the thought. “I hope they can make peace so we can get North in safely,” she said, trying to be light, but betraying her own worry that they were thoroughly doomed. Enemy territory.

But a day later, the rider from earlier returned. “I have found a ship that will bear you north,” he said. “There is a smuggler’s cove on Cracklaw Point where he will wait for two days. He expects a handsome payment.”

“It will be done.”

“Will you return from the North, m’lord?”

Lord Beric didn’t look like he thought he would. “In time. I would have the men loyal to our cause continue their efforts here without my presence. There may be a day when I need the might of the Brotherhood to travel north, but with the Freys and Lannisters overrunning the Riverlands…” He paused to grimace and glare at Thoros through one good eye. “Strength is needed here.”

The man nodded. “I will go tell the captain you accept his offer.”

“I hope we’re not strolling into a trap,” Lem muttered, gnawing a chicken bone.

“We’ll see when we arrive,” Lord Beric replied, which seemed like a reckless way of thinking of it.

But two days later, the captain, whoever he was, came through for them. They boarded the ship on a day where the sky was steely gray, and remained docked until the captain was sure no storm would erupt. They were going north. Sansa’s stomach churned.

She stayed below deck mostly, seasickness taking over. Arya was much happier on the boat, but she did her best to keep Sansa company. Edric was more consistently there, also not doing well on the sea.

“You know, I saw you at the tourney,” he told her as they sat together in companionable silence. “With your father. I wanted to say hello…” Stopped, he smiled. “But I never did.” He blushed. She blushed, too, and wondered how she hadn’t noticed him. She guessed she’d been too enthralled with Ser Loras. But now Ser Loras fought for the Lannisters.

“You should have.”

A few days of sailing, Sansa thought she had gotten a little more used to the ship, and was willing to venture out of her cabin. The crew of the ship were ghosts to her, but she found when she was above deck, Lem Lemoncloak lingered not far away from her glaring at any crewmen who came near her. She appreciated his concern.

The salt air was cold and bracing and she inhaled it deeply.

“How long will it take to get to Eastwatch?” she asked Anguy.

“Depends on the winds. I’ve never sailed before, m’lady, I don’t know.” He had scavenged himself wood and a knife and had spent his time at sea carving a new bow. He had no string, no fletching for the arrows, but it seemed to relax him.

“Do any of the sailors know?”

“It could be a month or more, my lady,” Thoros said, coming up from below deck with a sour look on his face and a wineskin in one had. “My trip from Myr to the capitol was similarly long. I admit, I don’t remember much of it.”

“You were drunk the whole time?” Lem asked.

“Just part of the time. Give me a little credit,” he said, grimacing. “I wish we had more wine now.”

“They don’t teach you fancy priests how to swim?”

“Even if they had, I probably missed that day. Some might tell you I’m not a very good priest.” That, Sansa could agree with. She knew how Septons were supposed to act, and couldn’t imagine the Lord of Light’s demands being all that different.

“I think everyone would tell us that,” Anguy said, and the men on the deck all laughed. “But you are a magnificent one.”

“Something like that, I suppose.”

Arya was practicing with her Needle on the deck, and she spun by Sansa with a shout, laughing at Gendry’s clumsy practice swing.

“Be careful,” Sansa told her. “You’re going to water dance right off the edge!”

“I’ll be fine, Sansa,” Arya said, but she stayed away from the edge of the ship as they continued their play fighting. Arya was very good, and Sansa was quite surprised that it made her so happy. She realized that her dancing master had been teaching her much more than dancing, and it seemed to give Arya a lot of pleasure.

She was much better at fighting than Gendry, too.

“Edric, do you want to practice too?” she asked when he came above deck. He looked shocked, but not as much as she would have thought. Sansa forgot sometimes that Dorne was such a different place, and forgot that Edric, who looked more like a Targaryen than a Dornishman, was from that place.

“No, I think you’d probably embarrass me, My Lady,” he said generously.

He was probably right, though, and the brotherhood laughed appreciatively.

“Arya, I think you would make a fierce warrior,” Sansa said when the tips of her sister’s ears started to go red. “If you were only just a little taller.” Then everyone within earshot dissolved into giggles, even Arya.

“I’m tall enough to skewer you!” she said with no real heat.

“It’ll be a long trip if you two insist on stabbing each other,” Tom pointed out. “Be gentle.”

Eastwatch by the Sea took two months of sailing. There were no storms. Cloudy days came and went. They stopped in Gulltown and farther north at Widow’s Watch. They passed eerily close to the cannibal and unicorn haunted Skagos. Pirate ships dotted the north but gave them no trouble, as if they knew they were coming and knew they were no threat.

Eastwatch was a desolate, cold place on the sea but the solid ground was such a welcome change that Sansa was tempted to fall over and kiss the frozen dirt.

“Lord Marsh is in talks with the smuggler, but he’ll see you soon enough.”

“It’s the smuggler I’d prefer to speak to,” Thoros told the steward who had greeted them, utterly baffled by their appearance. Sansa pulled her hood up further, and Arya shrank back. They would not be recognized by carelessness, that much Sansa wanted to be sure of.

The smuggler turned out to be a plain faced man with graying hair, with a black ship stitched into the fabric over his heart.

“Ser Davos,” Thoros said gamely, and Sansa recalled her father telling her a story: Lord Stannis, long under siege and starving, rescued by a smuggler in a black ship. The onion knight, Davos Seaworth. This was that man, whose fingers Stannis shortened in gratitude.

“Thoros of Myr, by the gods it’s been a long time,” Ser Davos said, looking startled. “I’ve got to say I’m not too happy to see you. I’ve had a bellyful of your red god.”

Thoros ignored that entirely. “Is your king in Eastwatch, dear smuggler?”

“He is in Castle Black. What do you want with him?” His eyes combed over the assembled group. They were salt-faded and filthy and tired.

“We have something for him. Take us to castle black.”

“I’m afraid King Stannis has tasked me with rallying the north to him,” he said, grimacing as though he thought the task quite impossible. “He has saved them from wildlings and gods knows what else on the other side of the wall, and they remain silent.”

“Would the northern heirs change his tune?” Tom asked, unable to resist plucking a string as he did.

“The northern…” Ser Davos looked at Sansa and Arya finally, and Sansa removed her hood. He bowed his head. “That might be worth his scorn, I think.”

“I trust she’ll be at Castle Black as well?” Thoros asked before Davos could leave their sight. Davos’s expression clouded for a moment.

“Aye, priest. I reckon you will.” He didn’t seem happy about being asked, but went off to find them mounts and provisions all the same.


	9. we are so alone, there's nothing we can share.

Stranger towered above the gelding that had been given to Gendry, Edric reluctantly sharing the mount. As they prepared for the trek from Eastwatch by the Sea to Castle Black, Lord Davos – he was the hand of the king, now, he had told them sheepishly, with his Flea Bottom accent, even worse than Gendry’s – kept shooting them unsure glances.

“King Stannis told me of one of Robert’s get in the city,” he said, to Lord Beric and Thoros but loudly enough that Sansa and Edric and Gendry and Arya could hear him. “A blacksmith. That’s the lad?”

“I’d noticed a passing resemblance,” Thoros said, albeit a little sarcastically.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gendry said, scowling. He hated this sudden interest in his origins more than he hated the cold of the north, which was a lot if you took his complaining seriously. “He’s dead, innit he?”

“It’ll matter where we’re going, lad,” Davos said, grim and cryptic.

 They stayed two nights in Eastwatch, the gratitude of the depleted Night’s Watch waning with each hour. They were tired and cold and broken after waves of wildlings, and Sansa was happy to leave them behind. Jon Snow waited ahead, and if the men around them were to be believed, he was a wildling or a skinchanger or a turncloak or a hero, or all four at once.

Arya’s excitement was mounting, though she put on a stony face to hide it. Sansa understood, too. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of how close they were to the last true family they had until he was standing right in front of them. The Twins had been a sharp lesson.

“Do you know much of the battle, Lord Davos?” Edric asked politely as they set off.

“The wildlings were taken by surprise, I know that much. It was a quick and decisive victory.” He spoke as though the words weren’t quite his own.

“And any other news? We were on the sea for a long while,” Lem asked, sounding impatient, but Sansa was with him. She had no idea what state Westeros was in after the death of her brother and she wanted to know.

“Much has happened, but it can be saved for a more appropriate time.” That was just code for him not wanting to talk about it in front of children, that much Sansa knew. Adults were all the same.

The ride from Eastwatch to Castleblack was long and cold but dull and uneventful. Arya got impatient, sitting on Stranger with Sansa, and complained loudly for the last day of their trip.

“Arya I will leave you here for the wolves if you keep howling like that,” Sansa warned her after her patience had been pushed to the limit.

“Good, I’d rather live with wolves than sit on this horse for a minute longer!” she said, but afterwards she quieted down, until finally the shape of the castle loomed over them, wooden walls and a charred, burnt out tower. The wall was high and shadowy and Sansa still marveled over every inch of it.

A rider greeted them, coming the rest of the way with them, and by the time they arrived in the courtyard King Stannis was already waiting with his guard.

“I sent you to accomplish something Lord Davos, don’t tell me you’ve failed so quickly?” he asked sharply.

“I’d say I’ve succeeded, Your Grace,” Davos said. “I bring you the Stark Heirs, whole and healthy.”

“How did this come to pass?” he said, finally looking at where Sansa was sliding off to Stranger, pausing to help her sister down.

“They were delivered by Lord Beric,” Davos said, hasty not to take too much credit apparently.

“You’ve seen better days,” was the only thing Stannis said to Beric.

“And won’t see them again,” Lord Beric agreed with a tilt of his head. “The Ladies Stark have suffered, I hope you’ll offer them your protection.”

“Your Grace,” Sansa said, curtsying. King Stannis was tall, and she saw the resemblance to Robert in his blue eyes and dark hair, though he was balding and his beard was shortly cropped, she thought he looked like more of a king than Robert ever had.

“Lady Sansa. Everyone thought you dead after the Blackwater,” he said bluntly.

“I would speak to my brother,” she told him. “Jon Snow. Is he well?”

“You will see Lord Snow in time. I wish to speak with you in private, about your brother’s affairs.”

She nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.”

A tall woman in red came from inside the castle into the courtyard, with her own guard trailing behind her. Sansa had heard tell that Stannis had taken up with a sorceress, but looking upon her now, the woman hardly looked a sorceress, no more than Thoros looked like a wizard. This must have been the woman that Thoros had spoken of before.

“My Lady,” he said to her. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“Thoros of Myr,” she said, looking to her king. “Valar Morghulis.”

“Valar Dohaeris,” he responded.

She made a comment in a language she couldn’t understand, but Sansa thought that it might have been High Valyrian, remembering the poetry she had tried so desperately to learn once. Thoros responded in kind, laughing.

Looking at their ragtag group, the lady’s red eyes were inscrutable, but shrewdness gave way to shock when she saw Lord Beric, where he stood talking quietly to Anguy.

“What have you done?” she asked, almost breathless with shock.

“We should speak in private, my lady.”

They went off without another word to anyone else, not even Lord Beric or King Stannis. Sansa thought that these red priests didn’t truly serve any king or lord, not the way a knight would.

“Lady Sansa, the Lord Commander has granted me use of the King’s Tower, I would speak with you there,” King Stannis said, looking irritated by the interruption. “I will be brief.”

“Of course, Your Grace, lead the way.” Arya followed her, and she didn’t reprimand her, waiting to see if King Stannis remarked on her presence.

“My wife and daughter arrived just recently,” he told them as they climbed the stairs. “Shireen’s clothes will fit your sister, and you’re nearly as tall as Selyse, so I think they will suit you, Lady Sansa.”

“That is most kind of you, Your Grace, we will thank the Princess and the Queen when we see them,” she said, elbowing Arya gently.

“Thank you,” she said, eyeing Stannis suspiciously.

“She can wait with my squire, Devan,” he said when they arrived at the door. The squire was a boy no older than Sansa, with the look of Lord Davos.

“What would you like to speak with me about, Your Grace?” Sansa asked politely as she closed the door behind them.

“Many things. Sit,” he commanded.


	10. everybody's watching me

“How did you escape King’s Landing?” the king asked firstly, once Sansa had settled into her seat. She had told the story so many times, she was sure she would die if she told it again, but she took a breath and told the story.

“Sandor Clegane took me from the city. The gold cloaks hunted us when the battle was done. I escaped, he didn’t,” she said. “Then I found my sister and Lord Beric’s men and we came north.” It was brief but seemed to satisfy Stannis.

“I see. Thinking you and your sister dead and buried, I offered Winterfell to Jon Snow. He denied me and became Lord Commander instead, and I see now I was premature in making the offer. By rights, Winterfell belongs to you now, Lady Sansa. Does that please you?”

Winterfell was never meant to be hers, but all the same, she was owed it for all that she had suffered. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“You have no intentions of being Queen in the North?” he asked, an edge of derision in his flat, cold voice.

“No, Your Grace. I will rule the north as is my right, with my brothers murdered, but as the Lady of Winterfell,” she said, knowing that’s what he wanted her to say. She didn’t want to be Queen, she just wanted to go home.

“I hope your bannerman share your good sense, Lady Sansa.”

“As do I, Your Grace.” Sansa paused for a moment, and when Stannis didn’t immediately speak, she spoke again. “What news of the war, Your Grace? Lord Davos thought us too young to hear, but as the head of House Stark, it’s my right to know, isn’t it? We were at sea for months, I haven’t heard anything.”

Stannis almost smiled. “Is it your right? Shying away from the truth simply because of your youth was foolish on my Hand’s part. Joffrey is dead. Whether by happy accident or murder is unclear.”

The words washed over her and she wanted to laugh. She wanted to dance. She wanted to sing. She wanted to tell Arya and see the joy in her eyes. But instead, she sat there and let King Stannis speak.

“He was wed to Margaery Tyrell at the turn of the year. She’s with child. And now he’s dead. Whether Margaery will rule as Regent until her child is of age is not clear. Cersei Lannister is more likely to slip the girl tansy and slit her throat in her sleep than she is to give the throne to an unborn child,” he said, and Sansa’s heart hammered, her joy dampened. Poor Lady Margaery. This must have been terrible for her. “Balon Greyjoy’s brothers fight for his throne, his two living children nowhere to be found. There is no better time than now for you to come to me. If the Northern Lords raise their banner again, it could be decisive.”

Sansa nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.” A million little strategies and ideas popped into her head, but she knew it was silly. She didn’t have a head for war. “I cannot promise the northern lords’ cooperation, but I can promise mine.”

That didn’t seem to satisfy Stannis, but he nodded curtly. “Your brother will want to see you. I’ll have Devan find accommodations for you and your men.”

“Thank you, Your Grace. You’re most kind.”

“No I’m not.”

No, he wasn’t. She curtsied and turned to the door.

“Lady Sansa,” he said quickly, and she looked back at him. “You’ve played the game of thrones for a long time, but there is little cause to play it any longer.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she lied, curtsying again and walking out to meet Arya.

“What did he want?”

“Just to make sure I wasn’t going to take up Robb’s war,” she said honestly. “Joffrey is dead!” she burst out, the words sounding as melodic as a song.

Arya’s eyes didn’t quite light up, but she let out a breath of relief.

They made it to the bottom of the staircase and Jon Snow was waiting at the bottom. He was surely taller and harder than he’d been at Winterfell. Scars marred his face, but otherwise he looked so like father that Sansa’s heart sank.

“Lord Snow,” she said with a courteous dip of her head.

“Lady Stark,” he said back, a wry grin playing on his face.

Arya jumped into his arms and Sansa joined in the hug too. “It’s good to see you, Jon,” she said, holding back a sob. He was their blood and he was here, he was alive, and he would keep them safe.

“And you.”

They all pulled away, trying to retain what little dignity was left to them. “I trust that King Stannis is working out your accommodations? And none of his men have been untoward?”

“No, everything has been fine,” Sansa told him. “What do you think of him?” she asked as they walked across the yard.

“A hard man,” was all Jon could come up with.

Sansa’s eyes traveled across the yard, landing on a toad faced man that she recognized instantly, her stomach clenching as she reached out for Jon’s arm. Lord Janos Slynt stared back at her.

“Sansa?” Arya asked, looking in Slynt’s direction as well. Jon followed their gaze and she could feel him tense.

“Grenn, Pyp, I want a watch on Brother Slynt,” he said under his breath to two black brothers passing by. “Effective immediately.”

They bowed and walked across the yard. A pack of Florent men walked by and obscured them all from view, and when the yard cleared again, Slynt was gone. Sansa couldn’t breathe.

They took an early supper and didn’t talk about it. She tried to forget. He was a brother of the Night’s Watch, no matter what he had been before. She had no reason to worry. She was forced to tell Jon of her escape, and he watched her with sympathy. She felt such a deep affection for her half-brother in that moment, she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved him fiercely, though she knew once she hadn’t.

“You’ll be safer here than you were in the capitol,” he said. “I don’t know how much that counts for, but I’m going to try. And King Stannis is a man of his word.”

Sansa nodded. “Father said that much of him.”

Jon smiled a little.

After supper, two of the king’s men came to escort them to their quarters, which they would be sharing.

“Will our men be nearby?” Sansa asked in her most lordly voice. It was odd to call them ‘their men’ but it seemed appropriate, after everything.

“Yes. We thought you would be more comfortable like that,” Stannis’s squire said with an amicable smile. “The barracks are large, you two will have plenty of space, being the only ladies.”

“Good.”

“And I’m Devan Seaworth, if you need anything,” he said, his cheeks a little pink.

“Thank you, Devan.”

As they crossed the yard, they heard a commotion approaching. Two knights, a blond man and a scarred man, were dragging Janos Slynt down the stairs leading to a different tower.

“Massey, what’s the meaning of this?” Jon said, adopting his own Lord’s voice as he walked over, clearly ready to give the King’s knight a thrashing.

“We found him in the rookery,” the blond said. “Sending a raven to the queen about Lady Sansa and Lady Arya.”

Sansa felt cold. The King and Queen had come out of the tower. She saw the Red Woman looming, too, Thoros leaning lackadaisically against a rail beside her. All had assembled. Janos Slynt had a bloody nose.

“You’ve been spying on the watch for the Lannisters?” Jon asked, but it wasn’t a question.

“I still have friends in court,” he said imperiously, but Sansa knew he had no friends. He was the son of a butcher, raised to a lord by a childish false king. He was not a man with true friends.

“Did he send the raven?”

“He sent two and we shot one down,” Ser Massey said.

Jon looked to the man to his right. “Edd, the block.”

Janos Slynt was sputtering wildly now.

When Jon raised his sword, he looked so much like their father.

“Arya, look away,” she said gently, nudging her sister.

“No. He helped betray father.” She was right. He had. And he had sold them to the Lannisters. But if the Lannisters wanted to come the miles and miles to find them, let them come. In the north, they were safe. In the north, winter had already come and the Starks would endure.


End file.
